Monday, October 20, 2014

Peter Pan Family Halloween Costumes

Before too many of you climb aboard the ‘Jeff’s such a good sport!!’ train, I’d like to state right up front here that he is fully invested in Halloween and general costumery. Like, to the point that when he first tried on his Captain Hook costume, the first thing out of his mouth was, “Do you think patients would like it if I wore this to work on Halloween?!”

Um, yes. Yes, I think they would like that very much indeed.

Last year, these two made a pretty adorable Monsters’ Inc. duo. And this year’s Peter Pan / Captain Hook duo is pretty dang adorable, too, if I may say so myself.

We started casually brainstorming family costume ideas in early September (I plan to take advantage of the opportunity to do a family costume for as long as possible—I know our days are numbered here, Forrest isn’t going to think it’s cool to do a family costume theme forever, so I’m enjoying it while I can). We tossed around quite a few different ideas, and ended up realizing that it didn’t matter much what Jeff and I wanted: it all hinged on Forrest and his willingness to participate. The rest of us will go with whatever, but if he wasn’t into a costume idea, there was no way we could force him to do it. He almost backed out of last year’s costume when he saw Jeff in full head-to-toe monster garb and freaked at the oh-so-frightening sight. So I pulled up some pictures of different costumes (some of which included superheroes and a full Star Wars gang), and let Forrest decide which one he liked best.

Who would have guessed he’d pick Peter Pan? He had never even seen Peter Pan.

While we waited for the costumes to arrive in the mail, I made sure he watched the movie. I’ll never know what possessed him to choose Peter Pan, a character and movie he wasn’t even familiar with (actually: sword. it was almost definitely the realization that being Peter Pan meant he’d get a sword), but I wanted him to see the movie so he knew what the heck he was dressing up as (although, I mean, he has a sword. he probably doesn’t care about anything else). And who’d have guessed it—he’s been requesting to watch the movie almost every day. Good thing he didn’t hate it, or we’d have been back at square one for costumes.

Just like last year, these costumes were sent to us by HalloweenCostumes.Com. After two years of DIYing Halloween costumes for this kid, I’m totally on board with store bought costumes. Sewing them myself is just too much work for this lazy seamstress. Kudos to those of you who design and sew amazing costumes! My sewing talent just doesn’t extend that for. For Forrest’s first Halloween at 2 months old, he was a very adorable corn cob (we lived in Iowa at the time, and a corn cob costumed baby was just too perfect to pass up); for his 2nd Halloween he was a very pathetic last-minute Batman—I literally cut the Batman logo from felt at about 2PM on Halloween and hot glued it to a t-shirt. It was extremely lame. For his 3rd Halloween, I dyed a shirt maroon so he could be Malcolm Reynolds (now that was an awesome family costume). The impressiveness level of my DIY costumes was declining steadily by the year—clearly time to hand over the reins to someone else. And Halloween Costumes does it swimmingly.

Our costumes are pretty rad. Jeff’s is the clear winner—that thing is amazing. The jacket and vest are velvet, and look so awesome in person. It’s one of those situations where we keep thinking, ‘this thing is gorgeous; think of a way you can keep wearing it past Halloween.’ We grabbed the wig and hook from Savers, but everything else was included, from the lacy neck ruffle to the boot tops, and it looks so cool. Forrest’s Peter Pan is adorable (I’ve had to talk him out of wearing the costume to preschool a few times) and Darcy makes the sweetest little Tinkerbell I’ve ever seen (when I first showed Forrest the family costume idea, he thought the plan was for him to be Tinkerbell, and weirdly enough, he seemed pretty cool with that idea).

And I’d like to blame Jeff for my costume. He insisted—absolutely insisted, with 100% confidence—that no one would know who I was if I dressed up as Wendy, which was my original plan. I don’t even know what to say about that, except that it’s ridiculous because—I mean, really. Wendy. He was totally baffled when I showed him the Wendy costume I planned to get—“who is that? Is she even in the movie? I’ve never seen her before. No one will understand that. And you can’t dress up as a character who’s younger than Tinkerbell when our baby is being Tinkerbell.” So I let him talk me into being “one of Captain Hook’s pirates,” except that Captain Hook did not have any lady pirates on his ship, and if he did they probably would have been less swashbuckle-y and more prostitute-y, and now here I am in a pirate costume, just hoping no one thinks I’m dressed up as a pirate prostitute. Whatever. Jeff’s fault. At least the kids look scrumptious.

I sort of want her to wear this everyday. Can she just always have wings on, all the time? That would be okay, right? Because it’s so cute I can’t stand it.

Big thanks to HalloweenCostumes.com for setting us up this year! We love our costumes and are so dang excited to get some Halloween festivities going.

Those are awesome! And I actually wondered, when I first saw the picture why you weren't wendy. Looks good anyway though. I've been trying to get my 3 boys to dress as the chipmunks Alvin, Simon and Theodore for a couple of years but they weren't having it. This year they finally did all coordinate as batman, robin and the penguin though.

Our family went as Peter Pan four years ago. I went as Wendy, and people totally knew right away who I was. But your pirate costume is awesome!

When we did the Peter Pan theme, my second son was a baby and we dressed him up as Smee. I've wanted to reuse that costume ever since. Well, this year our fourth son is approximately the same age, but I didn't want to do Peter Pan again, so instead, all six of us are going as pirates.